Tag: Notes from Pakistan

A world without rules

Now it’s a considered view of mine that it is in making rules, just rules, and following them, and implementing them across the board that humanity’s emancipation lies. And, I think, broadly it is rules which saved the West, including the USA, and made it the West.
Not only is it the state of the rule of lawlessness in Pakistan but the same state prevailing in most of  the world that makes one attach so much importance to rules and the institution of the rule of rules.
As Eisenhower once said,“The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.”
[Dwight David Eisenhower, 1890-1969]
Likewise, I have tried to imagine how a world without rules looks like:

A world without rules

There are only two things we should fight for.
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Political Parties Or Political Arrangements: A Philosophical Critique of Pakistani Politics

This August 10, Alternate Solutions Institute released my 2nd Urdu book, Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast: A Philosophical Critique of Pakistani Politics. Copied below are the English and Urdu media releases:

Urdu Book “سیاسی پارٹیاں یا سیاسی بندوبست“ (Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast) published
The book attempts a philosophical analysis of Pakistan’s political parties
The book smashes a number of political myths and cliches
Author dubs political parties as enemies of the citizens and focuses on how to make them friends of the citizens
Lahore August 10, 2012: Alternate Solutions Institute released today Dr. Khalil Ahmad’s 2nd Urdu book, “Siyasi Partian Ya Siyasi Bandobast: Pakistani Siyasat Ke Pech-o-Khum Ka Falsafiyani Muhakma” (Political Parties Or Political Arrangements: Philosophical Analysis of the Intricacies of Pakistani Politics). His first book, “Pakistan Mein Riyasti Ashrafiya Ka Urooj” (The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan) came out in February this year
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Enterprise of history – I

This is in continuation of a previous post, “Hind and Sindh civilizations and getting religion politicized.”
As I see that, and ,of course, for that matter everyone with a keen eye must have observed that, History has been proving, as Samuel Johnson dubbed Patriotism, the last refuge of (not a scoundrel) but all those intellectuals, men of letters, leaders, communities, nations, sections, or any other such introverted individuals or groups, who think themselves victim of this or that “injustice” at the hands of especially those who are ahead of them in any respect, be it economy, politics, philosophy, science, sports, etc. on the one hand, and on the other, in development, social luxuries, technologies, etc.
More than that, I think, in the presence of such a crowd, History hasn’t been able to acquire its true existence, or rationale.  
So a few new slogans may be devised: Let the History
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Hind and Sindh civilizations, and getting religion politicized

Recently I read an interview of Romila Thapar, renowned historian. Here are some questions and their answers which relate to the issue of religious identity in the sub-continent:

Q: Some scholars claim Hind and Sindh to be different civilizations. Do you subscribe to this view?

A: I don’t subscribe to this at all. I think the Indus civilization was very widespread. It spread out to many regions that are now part of Pakistan and India. I strongly object to this view because you can’t push an event that took place in the twentieth century five thousand years back in history.

Q: Why this insistence on two civilizations?

A: This happens when religion gets politicized. When religious organizations begin to feel that they can assert political power, they have to have an identity – a religious identity. And the easiest thing, of course is to say “we will take it as

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Wikileaking clandestine governments

AFP reports that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged President Barack Obama to end the US “witchhunt” against his whistleblowing website, in a speech Sunday from the balcony of Ecuador’s London embassy.

“I ask President Obama to do the right thing, the United States must renounce its witchhunt against WikiLeaks,” said Assange, making his first public statement since being granted political asylum by Ecuador on Thursday. [August 20, 2012]
   
I love Julian Assange. His initiative of wikileaking clandestine governments strikes at the root of the politics of ruling elites, or better say, political elites.  

Here is the explanation:

Wikileaking clandestine governments

The latest ‘leaks’ of Wikileaks provide a historical opportunity to re-consider many a taken for granted truth!

This writing too intends to discuss afresh some such propositions which relates to the affairs of the governments. For instance, whether governments are justified in keeping various types of information secret. In Pakistan and
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Signs of decline – 1

Reflections on various things: Signs of decline

I am an integral part of this society; but I am an observer of it also. I feel, i.e. smell, taste, touch, hear, and see the all-encompassing decline of the Pakistani society. 

As I notice, a clear sign of decline is this: Any entity set up for a specific purpose starts working against the same purpose. 

This idea has been reverberating in my mind since long. If A is created to fulfill purpose B, and if it defies that very purpose, and works to achieve purpose C, what will happen. No doubt, by losing B, A will lose its reason to exist, since C is not its purpose. That will set in motion its downfall.

Pakistani society is a case in point, and I would exempt only the present Supreme Court from this list. There are no entities where the signs of decline
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Kamra attack and the nuclear arsenals

“Gunmen who are believed to be Islamist militants attacked a major Pakistani Air Force base where some of the country’s nuclear weapons are thought to be stored early Thursday (August 16), setting off a heavy battle in which eight attackers and one security official were killed.
The attack on the Minhas air force base in Kamra, 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, northwest of the capital, Islamabad, was a stark reminder of the threat to Pakistan’s most sensitive installations despite ongoing military operations against militants in their tribal hide-outs.”
So, the story goes on in the local Pakistan edition of The International Herald Tribune of August 17, 2012.
Yesternight, Kamran Khan, talk show host at Geo News, enumerated about 150 militants attack on military installations and personnel, and estimated that Pakistan Military has suffered losses in these attacks and its fight against the militants it did not suffer in all its
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Enter the Age of Rules

Earlier in the post, The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan, the following was stated:
“. . . the author thinks that humanity is entering a new Age of Rules, superseding the Age of Ideologies, and the present book (The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan) derives its inspiration from the same enlightenment.”
Here is one article (written in May this year) where I tried to formulate this thesis of mine:

At the Confluence of Two Ages
Today humanity is standing at the confluence of two Ages. The one has tenaciously flown from the past, and is trying hard to persist through the present into the future. The other one also emerged in the past – not so distant, though. It seems strong and teeming with hope for the salvation of humanity, but is still unable to withstand the unceasing reincarnation of the symptomatically dying Age.
The dying Age manifests
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Entertainment in Pakistan

Reflections on various things: Entertainment in Pakistan
It was in 2003 that I was in Ankara (Turkey); one of the acquaintances put a question that dumbfounded me. He asked: what’s the people’s entertainment in Pakistan?
I had no immediate answer astonished me. I smiled and told him to let me think and find it.
I tried to imagine Pakistani people (and my family) back home and see what’s there they mostly entertain themselves with and said: They watch TV!
Now it’s 2012, and things haven’t improved a bit. The top most entertainment is still TV watching. Here for most of the citizens, social life, and out of home enjoying is almost non-existent. Music concerts, art exhibitions, and things like that are rare, and it is Ashrafiya, the elite classes who, it seems, have appropriated all such manifestations of higher level of aesthetic life!
I did dwell on that issue in
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The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan

This February Alternate Solutions Institute released my first Urdu book, The Rise of State Aristocracy in Pakistan (Pakistan Mein Riyasti Ashrafiya Ka Urooj). Here is a brief statement of what the book tries to discuss and formulate:
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Last year, Alternate Solutions Institute wanted to hold a series of seminars on the theme: Ashrafiya Ka Naheen, Sab Ka Paksitan (Not For Ashrafiya, Pakistan For Everyone).
So I thought of writing a 2-3 page explanation of the slogan. But the paper kept on expanding, and I let it, and tried to state the argument with as much detail as I could. In that sense, it’s not a planned book, rather an argument.
Here are some of the important points the book focuses on:

First, the book tries to argue that rule of this or that class, such as rule of the proletariat, puts one class in conflict with the other
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First things first

That rulers and ruled are different.
That means governments and their citizens are different.
That means ruling elites and the ordinary citizens are different.
That persons are good or bad by nature is irrelevant to Political Philosophy, or I think should be irrelevant to it; though it may have academic significance or relevance to other sciences.
That persons usually change as the circumstances incentivize or allow them to.
That means Pakistanis, or others in the “underdeveloped” and the “developed” world, are not bad by nature, and may change with time.
That they are all, the same human beings who want to live a just and peaceful life of their choice.
That knowing each other brings human beings closer – leaving behind the negative perceptions their governments / ruling elites through their unwise policies and ulterior motives, and ‘bad guy’ types, might have created about them.
Through this blog the
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